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“Or Readily Converted”

March 16, 2013 by 2 Comments

Now that HB 1224 has been amended and passed by both houses of the Colorado legislature, a line in the bill that would effectively ban all magazines with a removable floorplate is finally being noticed. And the bill’s primary sponsor Rep. Rhonda Fields (D-Aurora) is not only not concerned about that but fully supports the broad interpretation of the law.

The relevant passage from the definitions section of the engrossed version of HB 1224 in defining what constitutes a “large capacity magazine” reads:

(I) A FIXED OR DETACHABLE MAGAZINE, BOX, DRUM, FEED STRIP, OR SIMILAR DEVICE CAPABLE OF ACCEPTING, OR THAT IS DESIGNED TO BE READILY CONVERTED TO ACCEPT, MORE THAN FIFTEEN ROUNDS OF AMMUNITION

Say, for example, that you had a standard Glock 19 magazine that hold 15 rounds. You think that it is legal if this law is signed by Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) and could be readily transferred. However, you can put a Pearce Grip magazine extension on it which adds two more rounds. That 15 round magazine was just readily converted to a 17 round magazine and is illegal under the law as written.

Denver’s 9 News investigated and concluded the above example is a correct interpretation of the law. Moreover, when they interviewed Rep. Fields, she agreed. She also suggested that people could either get existing non-convertible 10 round magazines or that manufacturers would make 15 round magazines for sale in Colorado. She lives in a dreamland if you believes the latter.

Michael Bane has an extended discussion of this in this week’s DownRange Radio podcast. You can listen to it here. It explains why he is setting up a gun trust to protect himself.

Under Colorado law, Gov. Hickenlooper has two weeks to veto the bill. His veto must be an affirmative act – just refusing to sign the bill will let it go into effect.

You still have time to contact Hickenlooper using this link. He portrays himself as pro-business and now it is time for him to put up or shut up.

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Logistics Wins Wars

March 16, 2013 by

The Complementary Spouse’s uncle sent me the video below. It describes the Allied effort in World War II to get gasoline from Great Britain to the front in continental Europe. It was called Operation Pluto for Pipe Lines Under the Ocean.

Mike Vanderboegh recently had a post about the importance of logistics for the Russian Army in their Chechnya campaign. It was based upon an article that had appeared in the Marine Corps Gazette. The article found that the Russians struggled in their battle due to their logistical problems.

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For Reloaders

March 16, 2013 by 3 Comments

Once Fired 7.62 NATO brass

My favorite military surplus dealer, Old Grouch’s Military Surplus, just got in some once fired 7.62 NATO and 5.56×45 brass. I picked up a box of 500 of the 7.62 brass today. Tim is selling it for $99.95 a box.

After examining the headstamps, I found brass from Lake City (LC), PMC (PSD) in South Korea, and 205th Arsenal in Taiwan. This was all US military sourced brass. Tim has compared the weight of the non-US made brass and it was equal to that from the Lake City Ammo Plant.

When I purchased my brass this afternoon, they only had about 16 boxes left that were not spoken for. They also had quite a few boxes of the 5.56 brass. Contact Tim for more info on the 5.56 brass.

Jamison Brass and Ammo

I came across this company from a reloading list to which I belong. Jamison Brass is now a division of Captech International.

What caught my eye is the range of obscure brass that they produced. It isn’t often that you can find brass in such calibers as .256 Newton or .303 Savage.

It gets even better if you are a hunter of African big game and have one of the old African big game rifles. They offer brass in such calibers as .577 Nitro Express, .375 Flanged Magnum, .416 Rigby, and .500 Jeffrey. Michael Bane can even get his .450-400 Nitro Express 3″ brass for his safari to Africa.

Knowing that I can get brass for some of these calibers may make me look twice at old guns up for auction like a Savage 99 in .303 Savage Moreover, it will let some of them be put back into action for hunting or sport and that is good.

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“Jumped-Up Refugee From A Zoning Board”

March 15, 2013 by 2 Comments

The title of this post comes from a description of Sen. Dianne Feinsten (D-CA) made by Tam in a post back in February. I loved it then and I especially love it now that DiFi is all butt hurt over the eloquent thrashing she took from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.

Ted Cruz asked DiFi whether she thought Congress could likewise limit the right of the people under the 1st and 4th Amendments as she is seeking to do with her Assault Weapons Ban of 2012. As you can see in the video below, DiFi gets all huffy about it. Three male Democrats also have to jump in because it seems that they are worried that a woman can’t make a strong enough argument or so it would seem.

After the committee business meeting, DiFi had to run to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to wrap the mantle of victimhood across her shoulders. She said, “Well, I just felt patronized. I felt he was somewhat arrogant about it.” CNN is still playing the clip below of DiFi whining about her treatment as I saw just this morning on TV in a local McDonalds.

Did DiFin really say she put her fingers in the wounds of George Moscone and Harvey Milk? Hmnm. I wonder when DiFi will get around to telling people that fellow Supervisor Dan White didn’t use an AR or an AK or even an FN-FAL to murder them. No, Dan White used a S&W Model 10 in .38 Special – a plain old everyday revolver then used by police forces around the country.

20 years in the Senate and 9 years as the accidental mayor of San Francisco still doesn’t make one a expert on Constitutional matters. Nor does it seem to engender any real respect for it either. She is, and will always remain, what Tam described her as – a meddling harpy and a jumped-up refugee from a zoning board.

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InformationWeek On ATF’s Gun Tracing System

March 15, 2013 by 4 Comments

I came across an article from InformationWeek today that discusses the antiquated system (in their terms) of the BATFE’s gun trace system. Much of the data used for a gun trace requested by law enforcement must still come from manually looking it up on microfilm or microfiche.

You may remember that President Obama in his list of gun control proposals made tracing of firearms used in crimes part of his plan. It is number 12 on the list and mandates that all Federal law enforcement agencies submit a trace request for any firearm that they recovered at a crime scene. Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum on this on January 16th.

There are two obstacles to updating the system. The first is organizational and has to do with BATFE’s priorities.

ATF CIO Rick Holgate, an experienced technology executive with degrees from Princeton and MIT, is the first to agree. In an hour-long interview with InformationWeek Government at the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, Holgate described the microfilm system as a “target of opportunity.”

He would like to replace the microfilm with a modern imaging system capable of processing gun records much faster and more efficiently. A new system would cost about $4 million, Holgate estimates — not cheap, but a small price to pay to expedite this important process. The ATF’s tech budget is about $80 million, minus $10 million to $15 million if sequestration takes full effect.

But as important as it is, upgrading the Firearms Tracing Systems hasn’t risen to the top of the ATF’s priority list. Holgate has his hands full with a long list of other projects: moving the agency’s email system to the cloud, making aggregate gun-trace data available in an open format, modernizing and integrating the agency’s other legacy systems and, most recently, moving its email archive online to facilitate e-discovery. “It’s not that [replacing] microfiche isn’t important,” Holgate says. “It just has to compete with other priorities.”

The second obstacle is legal. The Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 forbids BATFE from creating a national database of gun registrations, sales, or owners. This is as it should be. If the BATFE does get around to upgrading the system, it must do so in a way that makes the data available faster but does not create the forbidden database. The article and the comments section do explore some alternatives.

I’m not an IT professional or a computer expert. However, when the BATFE does get around to upgrading their search system, we need to keep on top of it to make sure that they don’t surreptitiously develop a gun registry. This is where watching detailed budget requests becomes important. It will provide the clues needed to let us know in advance when BATFE plans to start their upgrade.

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This One’s For Sebastian

March 15, 2013 by 1 Comment

I didn’t know about Google shutting down Google Reader until I read about it yesterday on Shall Not Be Questioned. I thought no big deal until I realized that the Reeder app that I use on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air is just an extension of Google Reader.

Holy crap! This is a problem. I use it to keep up with stuff for blog posting and to see what my friends are posting in their blogs.

So this one is for Sebastian for alerting me to the problem. Now to just find a usable substitute. I’ll let the more tech savvy hash it out and then see if their solution works for me. But in the meantime, there is always the Twitter feed from Stalin.

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CCRKBA Blasts Passage Of S.150 Out Of Committee

March 14, 2013 by 1 Comment

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms issued a statement this afternoon blasting the party-line vote on Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Assault Weapons Ban of 2013.

From their statement:


CCRKBA BLASTS PARTY-LINE PASSAGE OF FEINSTEIN GUN BAN MEASURE

BELLEVUE, WA – Thursday’s strict party-line vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee to move anti-gun Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s measure banning so-called “assault weapons” was an insult to millions of law-abiding American citizens who own such firearms and have harmed nobody, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said.

“Instead of banning the most popular firearm in the country,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “we need to ban politicians who assault our rights. We are appalled and disappointed that Sen. Feinstein and her cronies have advanced this measure, which demonizes firearms that are used thousands of times each year to protect lives and property from criminal attack.”

Gottlieb noted that FBI crime data says that rifles of any kind are used in only a fraction of violent crimes annually, “yet Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have allowed this legislative travesty to move forward.”

“Demonizing certain firearms, and by default the people who own them, has become a scapegoat strategy by politicians who have allowed a broken justice system to release violent offenders back on the street while disarming their potential victims,” Gottlieb said. “By focusing their energy on disarming law-abiding citizens, politicians like Sen. Feinstein are perpetuating a myth that firearms cause crime. That’s as foolish as believing that cars cause drunk driving.”

Sen. Feinstein acknowledged that her legislation faces an uphill battle when it reaches the full Senate.

“We will encourage our members to contact their senators about this legislation,” Gottlieb said. “Public policy and constitutional rights should not be subject to the whims of gun prohibitionists who are quick to exploit the crimes committed by a few crazy people, in order to advance their agenda of public disarmament.”

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Feinstein Gets Her Way

March 14, 2013 by 3 Comments

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) got her assault weapons ban (sic) – S. 150 – out of the Senate Judiciary Committee today on a 10-8 party line vote. It now goes to the full Senate.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) offered four amendments to the bill which were all defeated on an 8-10 party line vote. His amendments would have made exceptions for those in rural areas; for those who had obtained a protective order; for those who certified they were the victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, or stalking; and for those people who were residents in a county or municipality that borders Mexico to protect themselves against the narco-terrorists. I think Cornyn’s intention was to put the Democrats on record as anti-rural, anti-woman, and anti-self defense.

The votes on Jane Kelly to be an Appeals Court judge in the 8th Circuit and on Kenneth Gonzales to be a District Court judge in New Mexico were held over.

 The results of the business meeting as reported are below:

Results of Executive Business Meeting – March 14, 2013
The Senate Judiciary Committee held an executive business meeting to consider pending nominations and legislation on March 14, 2013.

Agenda

I. Nominations

Jane Kelly, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit
Held Over

Kenneth John Gonzales, to be United States District Judge for the District of New Mexico
Held Over

II. Legislation

S. 150, Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 (Feinstein)
Ordered Reported by Roll Call Vote, 10-8

Amendment ALB13181 (Cornyn)
Failed by Roll Call Vote, 8-10

Amendment OLL13116 (Cornyn)
Failed by Roll Call Vote, 8-10

Amendment OLL13117 (Cornyn)
Failed by Roll Call Vote, 8-10

Amendment OLL13118 (Cornyn)
Failed by Roll Call Vote, 8-10

The webcast of the meeting for anyone with the stomach enough to watch it is here.

UPDATE: According to Politico, the White House is urging swift action on Feinstein’s Assault Weapons Ban of 2013. Press Secretary Jay Carney had this to say:

“Earlier today, the Senate Judiciary committee voted to send the full Senate an important piece of legislation to help keep weapons of war off America’s streets,” Carney said Thursday. “As you know, banning military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines is an important piece of the president’s plan to reduce gun violence.

“We urge congress to swiftly vote on and pass this legislation and other common-sense measures like requiring a background check for all gun purchases and cracking down on gun trafficking and straw purchasers. There’s been significant progress this week on these proposals and the president welcomes that. We urge congress to keep it up.”

Frankly every time I hear the words “common sense” out of Jay Carney or President Obama’s mouth, I shudder at the perversion of the English language.

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If This Guy Tries To Sell You An AR, It’s A Trap!

March 14, 2013 by 7 Comments

If a kinda short balding guy with a wispy moustache who looks like the guy in the picture below tries to sell you a used Sig M400 for a good price and you aren’t a resident of Arizona, you might want to ask for some identification. If the name is Mark Kelly, you better run because it is a set-up.

As has been reported many times and many places, Mark Kelly, husband of Gabby Giffords and born again gun control advocate, recently purchased a used Sig M400 AR-15 clone from a Tucson gun shop. He bought it when he didn’t think anyone was looking. Once held up to public scrutiny, his alibi became he bought it to show how easy it was to purchase and that he was going to turn it in to the Tucson Police Department.

Now it seems, if his comments in the video below are to be believed, he is going to try to sell the AR-15 to someone across state lines in a private sale. However, that would be illegal under 18 USC Section 922(a)(5). That section of the law which is part of the Gun Control Act of 1968 states that it is unlawful:

(5) for any person (other than a licensed importer, licensed
manufacturer, licensed dealer, or licensed collector) to
transfer, sell, trade, give, transport, or deliver any firearm to
any person (other than a licensed importer, licensed
manufacturer, licensed dealer, or licensed collector) who the
transferor knows or has reasonable cause to believe does not
reside in (or if the person is a corporation or other business
entity, does not maintain a place of business in) the State in
which the transferor resides; except that this paragraph shall
not apply to (A) the transfer, transportation, or delivery of a
firearm made to carry out a bequest of a firearm to, or an
acquisition by intestate succession of a firearm by, a person who
is permitted to acquire or possess a firearm under the laws of
the State of his residence, and (B) the loan or rental of a
firearm to any person for temporary use for lawful sporting
purposes;

In other words, unless you are a dealer you can’t sell a firearm to someone who resides in another state. To be legal, the sale has to go through an FFL who will log the firearm into his bound book, a Form 4473 is filled out, the NICS check is run, and then and only then, can the firearm be transferred. The statutory maximum for violating 18 USC 922(a)(5) is 5 years.

Moreover, willful receipt of a firearm from an unlicensed person such as Mr. Kelly from out of state is a violation of 18 USC 922(a)(3) which also carries up to 5 years of imprisonment.

So the bottom line is if you are not a resident of Arizona and Mark Kelly tries to sell you any firearm, run! It’s a trap and TV cameras will be nearby.

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Comm2A Files Suit Over Denial Of License To Carry

March 14, 2013 by 1 Comment

Commonwealth Second Amendment filed suit earlier this month in US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. They are challenging the lifetime ban by Massachusetts on the issuance of a license to carry for even minor drug offenses. Named as defendants are the towns and police chiefs of Salisbury and Natick.

The individual plaintiffs, Michael Wesson of Salisbury and Thomas Woods of Natick, each had a misdemeanor conviction for possession of less than one ounce of marijuana in other states over 30 years ago. They are both well into middle age. Massachusetts law treats simple possession of an amount of marijuana this size a civil offense and not something which can be used to deny someone a LTC.

From Comm2A’s release:


Comm2A, the organization dedicated to preserving rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, has filed suit in federal court against Police Chiefs in Salisbury and Natick for denying plaintiffs the right to possess a firearm for self defense.

Massachusetts law currently imposes a lifetime ban on the issuance of a license to carry to anyone convicted of even minor drug related offenses.

“Practically speaking, what this means is that someone who plead guilty to possession of less than an ounce of marijuana when they were a teenager, paid a fine and served no jail time, isn’t eligible for an LTC, even if they’ve led an exemplary, law-abiding life for the past thirty or forty years. ” said Brent Carlton, President of Comm2A. “This represents an utterly unreasonable denial of a fundamental right and in no way can be justified by the legitimate need to keep firearms out of the hands of irresponsible or dangerous individuals.”

Both plaintiffs have a single misdemeanor conviction for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana and have faced no other charges in the past 30-40 years. One plaintiff was convicted in 1982 and fined $10.00. The other plaintiff was convicted in 1973 and fined $300.00. Neither plaintiff was represented by an attorney at the time of their conviction.

Possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is currently a civil offense in Massachusetts punishable by a $100 fine and by law cannot be used to deny someone a License to Carry.

Comm2A and the individual plaintiffs are represented by Attorney Jeff Scrimo.

The complaint, Wesson et al v. Town of Salisbury et al, seeks injunctive relief for the plaintiffs and a declaratory judgement stating that both the Massachusetts law and the denial of the plaintiffs’ LTC constitutes a violation of their 2nd and 14th Amendment rights.

The full amended complaint can be found here.